Korean Job Discussion Forums

[scott]

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[Ignatious Loyola]

Very funny, Scott. A Korean once tried to tell me, seriously, that they were first on the moon!

[PootyTang]

Then there was the company man in one of my classes who said the Ford mustang was a Korean design, stolen by the imperialist Americans.

[Dan]

what exactly is mustang? is it a fabric, a design? what!?

[scott]

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[PootyTang]

[stalinsdad]

Car

[william beckerson]

I had someone tell me that Korea was never invaded by China. But the other way around.

Then again, I had an American tell me they won the war of 1812, and Canadians think they invented snow, so there's a lot of it go around.

[J.B. Clamence]

Yeah, I find stuff like that pretty annoying. I used to hear a lot of stuff like that when I worked in Turkey. Apparantly, the oldest <anything> can be found in Turkey. Also, people were shocked when I told them I was circumcized.

[Dan]

are you sure they were talking about the car? koreans have something else they refer to as mustang which i think is related to clothing

[PootyTang]

No, the subject that day was "Tiberon vs. Mustang" sorry.

[weatherman]

I must say confronting Korean misconceptions of us is one of the most daunting tasks facing any foreign in Korea. But more important and more scary are the misconceptions they have about themselves! If you look at delicious Korean bean past stew, (toenjang tchigea) Koreans think they have been eating that exact same food forever. You can include hot spicy kimchi in here too. The easy answer is yes, they have, but on closer inspection, you see the answer is no. In bean past stew you find that hot paper paste is added, and the hot pepper is relatively new to Korea, 1592 at the earliest. (Remember Koreans say they have 5000 years of history.) The onion they eat here is also from the west. (I don't know about the green onion though) Even the ho-bak, or the small green squash is from the west, squashes being indigenous to the Americas. The real answer is more complicated, but Koreans never want to do some study to find the truth, they only want to here "It's Korean!" [If I am wrong on the origins of these food please feel free to call me a pa-bo]

[scott]

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[elmer]

I think my favourite is that westerners eat bread and milk for breakfast. Can't figure out where they got that idea. That and westerners can't eat spicy foods. Go figure!

[Felix the Cat]

Yes, the Portuguese introduced the pepper to east Asia. I tried telling my classes that pimang - &#54588;&#47581; - is borrowed from the Portuguese, and they just about had my head on a platter for even suggesting such heresy.